Yellow/Moon

 

This month the ROY G BIV photo challenge brings us to the "Y": yellow. If orange symbolizes joy for me, I would say yellow is the color of celebration and sunshine-filled hope. And what perfect timing... We began the day with a new moon and, just before midnight, spring will arrive in Italy. The solar eclipse, which I followed online in the company of scientists whose enthusiasm was as entertaining as it was contagious, brought yet another celebratory note to the day. In Florence the morning merely dimmed for an odd spell, but Svalbard & the Faroe Islands both experienced a total eclipse (though the latter had to contend with clouds for mcuh of it).

When trying to put together a random collection of photos highlighting a single color, I always find it surprising just how many different shades there are. Everything from subtle to strong and, in the case of yellow, from warm and golden to chilly or verging-on-chartreuse-y.

The squash blossoms above (which we like to quickly dip into a simple batter of flour & water before frying in olive oil) are a shade of the yellow that I gravitate toward. I'm also drawn to the pale (and sometimes bold) yellows that characterize the majority of Florence's buildings. The image below shows a glimpse through our living room window yesterday morning. While I seem to be having problems getting Blogger to portray the intensity of contrast & color of my photos yet again this month, that shadow of the streetlamp against the yellow wall always gives me a moment of delight.

These next two images are from a recent excursion to the rose garden. The rose bushes had all been sharply pruned, and the garden was at its most stark & bare before growth will resume——with the exception of these small yellow blossoms that couldn't seem to hold themselves back (first image), and the mimosas that always bloom in time for La Festa della Donna/International Women's Day on 8 March (second set of images).

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And here are——surprise!——some obsequious yellow: lemons... I had been hanging on to the yellow string bag that held the lemons in case it inspired me for this month's ROY, and found I quite liked the threads caught between the light and the darkness, and the shadows cast by the net.

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And next, the Wallace Stegner book whose orange spine featured in my last ROY post, remains relevant again this month when the cover is revealed. The daisies on the bookmark my daughter made for me years ago are a bit difficult to make out, but each time I would sit down with the book I noticed how their yellow centers echoed the wildflowers "growing" on the cover. (Despite the sadness/cynicism of the story/narrator, I very much enjoyed reading All the Little Live Things, and have just moved onto The Spectator Bird, a sort of sequel in that it continues protagonist Joe Allston's journey——this time literally as well as figuratively.)

 

After examining & photographing the lemon slices, I realized I much prefer lemon-rind yellow to that of its cool/paler/shinier/juicy insides...which led to these photos of a short stack of lemon slices (which, alas, do not display as warmly golden in Blogger as they do in Photoshop)...
 

 

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And now, to conclude this post, is the inspiration for its title, Yellow Moon, a song from Pearl Jam's latest album (Lightening Bolt).

 

 

Wishing you all a sunshiny weekend, wherever in the world you may find yourself. And I'd love to hear what yellow symbolizes for you if you'd like to share it in the comments section below...

 

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A few details for those of you not already familiar with the ROY G BIV
photo challenge... Artists Jennifer Coyne Qudeen & Julie Booth started
it a few years ago. Each month is devoted  to a different color of the
rainbow, and once we explore each of these we will move on to other colors
later in the year. Everyone is welcome to join in the search. Please visit
Jennifer & Julie's blogs for links to each month's participants.

 Guidelines are here.

Orange joy

 

Once again, it's time for the ROY G BIV photo challenge, and this month we have been looking for "orange." For January's edition I let paper inspire me, so I thought I'd continue with a paper theme again this time. As is often the case, other tangents tempted me, and I must say that it's the most fun I've had for a while (things are still not the same around here since the beginning of the year).

Orange is my favorite color, so the hardest thing was probably deciding what to photograph. My day is full of orange: I brush my teeth with an orange toothbrush, my hair with an orange hairbrush, use amber shower/hair products and orange towels. Orange curtains frame the windows, which look upon terracotta roof tiles, blankets & wraps in shades of orange keep me warm, I pour tea from an orange pot into a cup with a sliver of orange rind. And since it's citrus season, the fruit basket is inevitably bursting with the delicious blood oranges that are at their best right now. However, I opted not to catalogue my orange life here (at least not visually).

In the image at the beginning of this post you should be able to just make out some letter forms for one paper project I'm working on, belatedly: the "place"-themed alphabet for A Letter a Week 2014. Originally I had planned to include several more photos at the end of this post, but have since decided to create a separate entry——so this post is less paper-y than I had first envisioned.

Here are some notes on the photos that have remained...

First is an image of the confetti (known locally as coriandoli) I made in honor of carnevale this week. When I emptied the hole punch of the orange and copper circles I had cut, out fell the remnants of a long-ago project, adding some other colors to the mix——certainly more in the spirit of Carnival. 

After the confetti is a picture from this morning...it's not the first time I have posted an image of the early sun falling on the roof tiles and so beautifully highlighting their curved edges, but this "crescent"-enhancing moment delights me each time I catch it.

Next is a selection of my favorite orange-spined books. The one on top——All the Little Live Things——is my current read from Wallace Stegner, an author whose writing I savor. Not page-turners, but rather stories with a painterly sensibility, told at a pace that invites on-the-page reflection, I have been taking my time working through Stegner's collection. You may notice that Witold Rybczynski's books compose a good chunk of the stack...I've always enjoyed how he writes so engagingly about the multiple facets of architecture/building. (I only just realized he has a blog, which I have yet to peruse.)

And then are some chili peppers that have been slowly drying (shriveling!) over the last several weeks. They began as a bouquet of bright oranges, reds & greens, but had changed considerably by the time I rediscovered them when making a pot of chili earlier this week. (In fact, they are perhaps even more photogenic now——definitely more patinaed——though I will spare you the dozens of photos they inspired me to take).

 

I thought I'd finish with this photo of an orange freesia that I took a couple of years ago, against the temporary "garden" of freesias that popped up on the studio table during a photo shoot. I liked the image so much that I gave it a title——OrangeJoy——and offered it in my Etsy shop for a while (plus have sent many post card versions as thank you's). It remains one of my all-time favorite pictures, and fills me with joy whenever I come across it.

 

Here's wishing joy for everyone, in whatever shape, form or color

that happens to be. I'd actually love to hear which color symbolizes
joy for you if you'd like to note it in the "comments" section...

And Happy Year of the Goat/new moon!

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For those of you who are not familiar with the

ROY G BIV photo challenge from past years, it was first begun

by artists Jennifer Coyne Qudeen & Julie Booth. Each month is

devoted to a different color of the rainbow, and once we do each

of these we will move on to other colors later in the year. All

are welcome to join in the search. Please visit Jennifer & Julie's

 blogs for links to other participants. Guidelines are here.

Black interspersed

It's the third Thursday of the month: time for September's installment of the ROY G BIV photo challenge. Since we've already gone through the colors of the rainbow, you may recall (after last month's "pink") that we are exploring other colors for the rest of the year. This month it's "black."

Over the past few weeks I've been keeping an eye out for how black shows up in my day-to-day life. A few of these images digress somewhat from black (as does my writing), but that is still the point from which I began.

Black has cropped up in the studio quite a bit lately. Among the hodgepodge of my work space, the first photo (above) shows a recent purchase: a Moleskine address book, which I am using as a way to be more organized in documenting/collecting my ideas & thoughts. Day-to-day, I use a large sketchbook to record my notes & creative process (as well as the usual rescued grocery lists, backs of test prints, receipts, etc.), but since ideas can get lost/buried this way the Moleskine will serve as an index of sorts.

 

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This spring I reread several of Natalie Goldberg's books, an experience that always offers much inspiration and food for thought. (Several of the books have blue covers, and I had actually meant to photograph/discuss them for ROY G BIV's "blue" month.) In Thunder and Lightening, Natalie recalls how she discovered the writing of Wallace Stenger. She had picked up his Crossing to Safely several times, but could never bring herself to buy it. She writes:

"Penguin had done a good job with the cover, a beautiful photo of golden leaves covering the ground and some still on thick-trunked trees, a stone wall through a field——autumn at its best. And the book had good, clear print inside, made to lure a reader into sinking in. But then I'd turn to the back cover: "A grand, rich, beautifully written novel about a long, not-always-easy friendship between two couples." BORING. I imagined the smug recounting of four upper-class lives. I wasn't interested. I put it back on the shelf. This routine——picking it up, being enticed by the cover and repelled by the back——probably went on for five years."

But, finally, the right person gave her a recommendation she couldn't ignore. I figured if this book had won over Natalie Goldberg after such resistance, it must be good! And it was. I'm not one for "page-turners," and Crossing to Safety is most certainly not one. But it's just the kind of thoughtful, deep, engaging writing that I love, and I am now on my third Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose——which has a (mainly) black cover, seen below left, at the front.

On the right is the little slate I use to make to-do lists; I can prop it up on my desk to remind myself of what I am supposed to be working on (often, not surprisingly, I do digress). The forged, black-handled scissors in the foreground are my favorites, and follow me around the house...

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Another black-covered book that's been keeping me company is Italo Calvino's Le Città Invisibili. I am using it as a punto di riferimento for my latest A Letter a Week (ALaW) project. I photocopied the English version and have arranged the brief, poem-like chapters according to the eleven themes Calvino explores in this sublime book (the themes are interspersed, but I wanted to be able to more easily consider the five stories of each theme at once). Below, on the left are the annotated photocopies; on the right are my copies of both the original Italian and the English translation. I love the cover of the translation. As some of you may know, Invisible Cities is woven around Marco Polo's recounting of his travels to Kublai Khan, but in fact all of the stories are describing Venice (and its many facets)——I love how the title alludes to this Venetian connection.

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And speaking of ALaW, the copper wire words seen on the Moleskine book in the photo at the top of the post have come about, belatedly, as a response to ALaW 2013's "peace"-themed letters. Though I worked on the project intermittently during the course of 2013, I never did commit to a direction for my alphabet. International Peace Day is coming up on 21 September, so I've been preparing a small installation in honor of the day, inspired by the work I did for ALaW. Incidentally, the wire words have turned out to be more of an "exercise" for the final piece, as I took yet another direction in the last few weeks——or more like returned to an earlier idea. But I liked how the words caught the light as they recede, below. (The explanation for the "x...y...z" will be forthcoming in a post dedicated to the project.)

The photo that follows it, though not black-themed, seemed to carry forward the feeling I got from the wire word one. I just love the effect of the early sun when it's beginning to warm up the roof tiles, and yesterday morning I picked up my camera to capture it (not the first September I have been inspired to do so!)...

 

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This is another photo taken upon waking yesterday——such an intense light next to such a strong shadow...

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And this pair came about on different days last month, when the late summer light helped to create such rich contrasts.

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And this final image shows the last light glancing on Borgo La Croce, as the shadows begin to deepen...

 

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The kids went back to school this week and though summer is not officially over, the mood is definitely autumnal. I have been reminded many times lately of how beautifully the month of September frames Florence. There's also the nostalgia factor...my first visit to Florence was eighteen Septembers ago, and it happens to be the month we moved here as well (September 2nd marked ten years). While I sometimes think that ten years is a good, long, time, and that maybe——just maybe——I might "be able" to live somewhere else, I realize that I actually love living here more and more as the years pass. Even after being in Florence for ten years, I don't think a day goes by that I don't feel grateful that this is where I am...
 

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{The ROY G BIV photo challenge was created by artists Jennifer Coyne
Qudeen & Julie Booth. Each month is devoted to a different color,
and all are welcome to join in the search. Guidelines are here.}

Thirty bulbs

 
There have been three batches of paperwhite bulbs this winter—I rather greedily took whatever I could find during various visits to the weekly plant market, for a total of thirty bulbs. Only this past weekend has there been the perfect combination of blossoms, sun & time to create some "story strips" with various components. I had some fun dissecting the seedpods with my X-Acto knife, both lengthwise & crosswise (seen in the detail of the right-hand "page" of the story strips below), as well as the flowers, the buds that never did open, etc.

  

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I also thought I'd share some shots of the second "blooming" which, unlike the first one I shared on the blog, aligned itself with a period of sunshine. (I found the roots from the already-bloomed bulbs to be equally fascinating...)

 

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Other than the fragrance of a few last blooms, this is what remains...

...lots of long stems starting to flop over under their own weight (I was inspired to take this photo because of the way the stems mimicked the pens angling out of the jar)...

...& a random bulb whose initial sprouts never took off despite considerable coaxing (but which I have found to be quite lovely just sitting in the patinaed copper tray)...

 

 

Observing the paperwhites has certainly been a happy winter diversion during the past two months. On the note of such pleasures, I wanted to mention a book I have been rereading & thoroughly enjoying: The Passionate Observer. My dear friend Andrea gave me this book ten years ago, and it is among my favorites in terms of the high-quality production & content. The text is a collection of writings by nineteenth-century French entomologist Jean Henri Fabre, and is illustrated with watercolors by Marlene McLoughlin (who knows how to visually bring out the beauty of an insect as well as Monsieur Fabre does through his affectionate & attentive observations of the creatures).

 

 

Wishing you equally fulfilling & inspiring pastimes in your spare moments too...

As summer begins to fade...

You can already feel summer taking its leave—in the cooler air, in the scent of early morning fires in the fields, in the sun reaching further in the room. I've barely had a chance to look at the last several months' photos until now, as I design the 2014 calendars for PaperSynthesis... In a way, I have also been reliving the summer. I equate fall with nostalgia, something I always assumed was related to decades of back-to-school memories, but lately I've been wondering if maybe the nostalgia is for those hot, glorious days of summer. I know some are ready to embrace fall (and I can relate to this because it was my favorite season ever since I can remember), but as I get older I find I love summer even more. Before it slips away this time around, I thought I'd share a few moments of this summer.

The photo at the top of this entry shows a weaving I made with these strips of green 'ribbon' that came in with Venice's modest tide each day. They smell like seaweed, salty & pungent. Below is the weaving back in the studio, after being pressed/preserved in my journal for a few days. I was surprised to see that the green strips had retained their color, as the handful I brought back in my 'shell' tin had blackened as they dried. So now this 'weaving' joins those I have been working on in the studio over the last eighteen months, since my early forays into found poems (images to come, one day).

It can actually be quite discouraging to see how long it takes me to carry an idea to 'completion', especially since I usually seem to 'get' about ninety percent of the way upon the initial inception of a concept...it's that last ten percent that can take months, or even years. But I also find the 'magic' comes from those last ten percent, so I believe the wait is worth it.

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I have been trying to make more time to read fiction, and what better time than summer? The vast majority of the books on my bookshelves are non-fiction, and I'd say I probably acquire seven or eight non-fiction works for every novel. I had been looking forward to reading Vanessa Diffenbaugh's The Language of Flowers since picking it up on my final bookstore browsing session in the US. It finally came along to the beach with me earlier this month; in the (occasional) periods when I could tear my attention from the water, I enjoyed losing myself in the story of the main character, Victoria—a young woman whose traumatic upbringing in the foster care system made it difficult to communicate with the world, but who managed to find her voice through the language of flowers.

A dictionary of flower meanings is included at the back of the book, as well as an interview in which the author comments that "some will never forgive me for attaching a negative definition to their favorite flower!" Indeed, I was a bit disillusioned when I learned the meanings of some of my favorite flowers. Hydrangeas signify 'dispassion', acanthus 'artifice', and peonies 'anger'. (But then there are dahlias—'dignity'—sweet peas—'delicate pleasures'—orange roses—'fascination'—and ranunculuses—'you are radiant with charms'.) I loved how Victoria was able to silently 'speak' her feelings with a well-chosen flower. At first it would be one that expressed sentiments like the anger, bitterness or mistrust she felt. But eventually, as chapters alternate between her past and the present as it unfolds, in the role of a florist she finds herself fashioning bouquets to convey the emotions her customers sought either for themselves or wished to elicit in the recipient. Ultimately, Victoria reaches a point where she can expresses positive feelings of her own: forgiveness, reconciliation, gratitude, hope.

I finally finished reading the book, a chapter at a time with morning coffee, after returning home. I liked that it wasn't a 'page turner' (a type of book which I tend to avoid). The first-time author describes some of the writing—and the inevitable rewriting—of the book as quite intense, but I came away feeling that her delicate crafting of the story paid off beautifully. And, with its salt-air & salt-water wrinkled pages, it will serve as another reminder of this sweet summer. (Not to mention as an inspiration when I participate in National Novel Writing Month again this November).

 

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The heat in Florence can be pretty energy-sapping & brain-numbing in July and August, and a/c is not a given. One way we stay cool is by making granite (plural of granita). Machines at the front of most bars (i.e. cafès) in Italy churn around colorful icy mixtures that are generally flavored with fruit-'inspired' syrups (though some of the better gelaterie make them from fresh fruit). At the sea, a granita generally means a cup of granulated ice squirted with what is probably the cheapest, highest fructose corn syrup-y liquid available (but my, do they taste good after a few hours on the beach!). Making them is so easy, though, and I've found you can use just about anything, from cranberry juice to limeade, orange soda and milky coffee. And no extra sugar needed. Simply pour the drink of your choice into a freezer-proof glass that can withstand prodding from a fork & freeze until it begins to harden. You can break up the semi-frozen liquid with a fork at intervals during the freezing process or leave a completely frozen glass of your chosen beverage at room temperature for ten to twenty minutes, then use the fork to break up the semi-melted mixture until it's uniform.

The granite shown below are, from left to right: cranberry juice; almond milk with cardamom & cinnamon; pineapple & watermelon blended into a juice; and tonic water + lime juice, garnished with mint (unfortunately this last one had melted considerably by the time I got the photo, but was still icy-cold & very refreshing).

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Though the Red Hot Chili Pepper's Song in the video included below is not named for the Italian Venice, but rather Venice Beach in L.A, I can't help but think of 'la bella Venezia' whenever I hear it—the melody is haunting, soulful, multidimensional and beautiful, just like Venice. The lyrics are a tribute to the woman who counseled lead singer Anthony Kiedis to the other side of his drug addiction, and sadly died of cancer soon after he bought her a house in Venice Beach. Below I've included a live version played at Slane Castle. Around minute four, John Frusciante picks up his acoustic guitar, taking the song to a whole new level. The studio version can be found here.

 

Some of my favorite lines ~

...In the moment of the meantime...

...Do it all then it all again...

...Disbelief that I do suspend...

'Venice Queen' is from the 2002 album By the Way, which my daughter & I finally bought in the US this summer, and played over & over on a road trip to visit our friends in Chapel Hill. Besides 'Venice Queen', my favorites are 'Universally Speaking', 'Dosed', 'The Zephyr Song', 'Midnight', 'By the Way' and 'Can't Stop'. I only have to hear one of these songs—or, better yet, the whole album—to take me back to Highway 85: windows down, hair flying, singing at the tops of our voices. Even though we traveled in the slow lane (it had been seven years since I'd gotten behind the wheel), that trip embodied the sweet freedom of summer.

And on that note, my word for August is 'dream'. It seems to encompass my frame of mind at the moment, as I dream on these perfect summer days of dreams for the future.

Wishing happy dreams to you as well...